This week’s
podcast completes our very modest look at Richard Wagner begun on
Tuesday’s Vinyl’s Revenge post. As a tie-in between the two, the
podcast begins with another excerpt from the opera Tannhäuser, the
Festive March from the closing bars of Act II.

Where
casual listeners criticize Wagner’s operatic output, more often than not length
and plot complexity bubble to the surface. For the most part, Wagner’s works
are set in the world of myth and legend – Tannhäuser being an excellent
example. However, no work rivals in breath, length and plot complexity with the
four-part Ring des Nibelungen, "ein Bühnenfestspiel für drei Tage
und einen Vorabend" (a stage festival drama for three days and a
preliminary evening). The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale and sheer
length: a full performance of the cycle takes place over four nights at the
opera, with a total playing time of about 15 hours.

Yikes!

Wagner's
title is most literally rendered in English as The Ring of the Nibelung.
The Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is
the one he fashions from the Rhine Gold. The title therefore denotes
"Alberich's Ring". The scale and scope of the story is epic,
following the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over
the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The
drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until
the final cataclysm at the end of Götterdämmerung.

As a
significant element in the Ring (and his subsequent works), Wagner adopted the
use of leitmotifs. These are recurring themes and/or harmonic
progressions. They musically denote an action, object, emotion, character or
other subject mentioned in the text and/or presented onstage. Wagner referred
to them in "Opera and Drama" as "guides-to-feeling", and
described how they could be used to inform the listener of a musical or
dramatic subtext to the action onstage in the same way as a Greek chorus did
for the theatre of ancient Greece.

In today’s
podcast, I retained two selections from the Ring. The first, the infamous “Ride
of the Valkyries” is taken out of an operatic performance, with the lyric
sopranos providing the battle cry. The second selection happens to be the
ultimate scene from the fourth and final opera. In a sense, it is a microcosm
of the story, complete with a recap of the many leitmotifs Wagner used
throughout the cycle to situate his characters.

Equally
ambitious in its own right, Parsifal – Wagner’s last completed work,
premiered in 1882, the year before his death - is the story of a young man
whose virtue and compassion become the salvation of the Knights of the Holy
Grail. He wards off temptation and danger to regain the spear with which
Christ's side was pierced on the cross; in the process he heals the king,
Amfortas, of a cursed wound, and relieves the fallen woman, Kundry, from her
eternal wandering.

The podcast
combines digital-era recordings and vintage classic performances by the likes
of Kirsten Flagstad, Monserrat Caballe, and Lauritz Melchior, as well as Arturo
Toscanini (featured in the last selection, the fanfare Prelude to Act III of Lohengrin)